Tech giants to soon provide email IDs in your Mother tongue

Fancy an email ID in your mother tongue? If the Indian government has its way, American tech giants like Google, Microsoft and homegrown providers like Rediff could soon be signing you up for email addresses in the regional language of your choice.

At a meeting held last month, the government asked email service providers to enable users to sign up for addresses in local languages, starting with Hindi. This is in line with the big agenda of ensuring that when the Internet reaches deeper into the semi-urban and rural areas, sufficient local-language content and the tools to access this should be available.

Executives of Google, Microsoft and Rediff attended the meeting and are of the view that the technology allows for email addresses in scripts such as Devanagri. While Microsoft says the latest versions of its software support so-called internationalized email addresses, Gmail started recognizing IDs that contain accented or non-Latin characters such as in Chinese or Devanagri. The company had posted a blog saying that Gmail users can send emails to and receive them from people who have these characters in their addresses.

Rediff CEO Ajit Balakrishnan said the company can implement such email addresses easily. “Email addresses in local languages are one of those nice things to have, but the government should first bring down the cost of access to around Rs 50 for the Internet to truly reach the masses,” he said. Consumption of local-language content on the internet is rising, which is a good sign for the industry.